Obama on Energy: Make it clean; make polluters pay

Sen. Barack Obama came across as a guy you’d like to have a beer and watch a ballgame with Friday morning as he toured the McKinstry Co., but turned serious to say that his hosts will be on the cutting edge of a totally revamped national energy policy.

“We will make America 20 percent more energy efficient by the year 2030,” said Obama, making the third Seattle visit of his presidential campaign.

As supporters filled KeyArena a few miles away – something the Sonics have not done all season – Obama was getting a green industry tour from a contractor that retrofits buildings to make them more energy efficient.

The poet Carl Sandburg, writing nearly a century ago, dubbed Chicago the “City of Broad Shoulders.”

The Chicagoan running for president this year, however, feels that future American jobs will be created not by more smokestacks, but in developing new energy sources and stretching the kilowatts we have.

“McKinstry will grow: Companies like McKinstry will grow across the country,” Obama promised.

The Democratic candidate said he would invest $10 billion a year in a Clean Economy Venture Capital Fund to make it happen. Obama called for a “hard cap” on carbon emissions into the atmosphere, but the goal of achieving an 80 percent reduction by the year 2050.

“No business will be allowed to emit greenhouse gases for free,” said Obama. “The polluters don’t own the sky. The public does.”

“Green” energy tours have become a staple for dignitaries visiting a town that has renamed itself the Emerald City.

It was also the perfect site for an Obama visit. The Illinois senator has positioned himself as a unifying leader of the future, which has provided an indirect way of depicting Hillary Clinton as a blast from the past.

Obama has, however, drawn a certain amount of suspicion from greens on the energy-environment front. He has refused to rule out nuclear energy as a component in the nation’s energy future. Illinois mines coal, and has more operating nuclear plants than any other state.

Obama was joined Friday by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who has signed up 780 of his counterparts across the country in the Mayors’ Climate Initiative, pledging to reduce greenhouse gases.

Obama took a shot a Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, which met behind closed doors early in the Bush Administration, and produced a dig it-drill it-burn it energy strategy for the country.

“They opened the door to oil lobbyists and closed the door to everybody else,” he said.

Obama went on, however, to note that all administrations of the past 35 years — Republican AND Democrat — have promised to curb the carbon economy and America’s dependence on foreign oil.

“They all fall victim to the same Washington politics,” Obama said, and become “beholden to the same special interests.”

He skirted the nuclear issue. The atom will often be “cost prohibitive” until the country solves the problem of storing “spent” but highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear plants.
If the problem is solved, Obama added, “Of course we pursue it because it does not emit greenhouse gases.”

The Obama-Clinton contest has focused, in recent days, on which Democratic hopeful would provide a bigger target to the Republicans’ attack machine come November. Obama hinted earlier this week that Clinton would provide the jucier target.

He danced around the issue Friday.

“The Republican Party will go after whoever the Democratic nominee is,” Obama said. “It is a simple point . . . They make a cottage industry out of it.”

Obama did, however, depict himself as a candidate who can “grow the electoral map” in November. He has of late swept primaries and caucuses in such “red” states as Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Idaho and Kansas.

“I do think I have brought people into the process who don’t normally vote Democratic,” Obama argued.

He is also ready to face Sen. John McCain, the Republicans’ frontrunner, on the Iraq War.

“On the most important foreign policy decision of the generation, John McCain was wrong from the start,” Obama said.

Obama was greeted with a sitting ovation as he worked the McKinstry cafeteria. The company’s white collar managers, in another room, seemed a bit startled to see a presidential candidate in their midst.